'Munchen' on pork at the Hofbrauhaus

Next stop: Munich.

The beer capital of the world and capital of the great region of Bavaria.

We arrived here on Christmas eve expecting the streets to be full of people, gluwein (hot wine) and Christmas cheer.

WRONG.

Everything was packed up and over; no more Christmas markets, no more eierpunsch and definitely no streets full of people. In fact, it was pretty much a ghost town. What we hadn't learnt prior to this was that Christmas eve is the day that most Europeans really celebrate Christmas so everything is closed up and quiet.

We wandered through the town anyway, keen to see a bit of this famous city. Luckily for us we came across one of the only establishments open for Christmas Eve dinner - the Hofbrauhaus! Yay! We walked inside and it was absolutely chock-a-block with people and giant one litre beer glasses. Thank you Santa.

We ate a meal made up of about 85% lard and 15% misc ingredients. It was yummy and disgusting at the same time but what made the entire experience even more memorable was our first taste of what Munchen is most famous for, its beer! We downed those baby's then headed back to our hostel for a few drinks with all the other lonely souls who were missing their families at Christmas.

The following day we'd planned to either got to Neuschwanstein castle or the Dachau concentration camp memorial. This was not to be. Everything was shut. So we did a bit of laundry and had a Croatian Christmas lunch at a really cheap, amazing restaurant.

That night we drank in the bar again and went out for a while but didn't really enjoy ourselves all that much due to missing home.

Either the next day or the one after (I can't remember exactly because all our days in Munich have kind of blurred into one) we went to Dachau concentration camp. It was a very sobering experience but one that we enjoyed nevertheless. We walked through the gas chambers, wandered through barracks where the prisoners were kept and watched a half hour documentary of footage from Holocaust. Very depressing.

The next day we planned to go to Neuschwanstein but due to us being 'forced' to 'taste-test' a lot of Munich's fine beer we were unable to get out of bed the next morning. Another day wasted unfortunately.

We lazed around for part of the day then made our way to the magnificent and awe-inspiring town of Dresden.